WordWolf

Not that anyone said it did. Strength of character is dependent upon what that character was based on. It's integrity with a moral dimension- and whether that actually means anything depends on how integrated one's morality was until that point, and how solid it was until that point. A system that's integrated and weak can be discarded in its entirety when sufficient excuse is offered- a large enough bribe, for example- and a system that's not integrated isn't consistent enough to provide guidance about what to do or what to not do-so there's nothing to base decisions on but a whim, and nothing to prevent a demagogue or advertiser to get one to buy into whatever they were selling just because it's cleverly phrased or repeated enough. Basing one's character on the Bible, or on one's relationship with Jesus, is one option (two options), and both can be used for comprehensive, integral, consistent systems. That can't necessarily be said for everything, and constructing a personal system from the ground up is certainly a lot more work than a lot of people are willing to do. So, they don't have a coherent code of conduct, and will go along with the crowd easily enough. That's good news to the advertisers and the demagogues of all stripes- they need cattle to direct and exploit.

"I walk along the city streets, you used to walk along with me And every step I take reminds me of just how we used to be. Oh, how can I forget you, girl?" "As shadows fall, I pass a small cafe where we would dance at night. And I can't help recalling how it how it felt to kiss and hold you tight." "If you should find you miss the sweet and tender love we used to share. Just go back to the places where we used to go, and I'll be there. Well, how can I forget you, girl?" Artists who did versions of this song included Dionne Warwick, Jose Feliciano, The Four Seasons, Jay and the Americans, Peggy Lee, Martha and the Vandellas, and Johnny Mathis, not counting the version I'm familiar with.

The idea was to suggest that EVERYBODY does it (which is not true), then suggest that twi get a free pass about it because everybody does it (although it would still be wrong even if everyone did it.)

I don't think corruption is guaranteed after power. Look at Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. They've given away ENORMOUS piles of money after acquiring enormous piles of money. By Lord Acton's thinking (the guy who made the comment about power corrupting), they should have been GUARANTEED to be greedy and grasping. I do think that power/OPPORTUNITY will AMPLIFY WHAT'S THERE. A generous person will remain generous, a trustworthy one will remain trustworthy. Those who don't commit crimes primarily because they'd get caught, however, would probably become criminals, and the greedy will remain greedy.

I don't think that's it, but I still don't know what it might have been. I liked both shows. I really appreciated the nods to the original show- Roarke looking at a closet of white suits, picking the black, then saying to burn the others, Roarke in a flashback IN a white suit, a guy ringing the bell with a hammer and yelling "THE PLANE! THE PLANE!" and Roarke telling him ONE shout is sufficient. Amick, I'm sure you remember, played a shapechanger who was therefore very versatile for roles all over the island. Finkel's office helped explain how people ever got to the island. Then again, some people are happier just dealing with the island and that's it. The newer "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" gave Wonka's back story, and even with Christopher Lee, it didn't seem to add much to the movie. So, maybe people thought a back-story and the staff actually having some role was a handicap to the series.

The remake of this show didn't last long, but I personally have no idea why. I liked that it went into some background details of the settings and recurring roles, where the original series did absolutely nothing of the kind. Among the new characters for the remake was Fyvush Finkel as a travel agent, and Mädchen Amick as an onsite assistant with multifaceted talent. The original had many celebrity guest-stars, and was mostly filmed in California.

"As shadows fall, I pass a small cafe where we would dance at night. And I can't help recalling how it how it felt to kiss and hold you tight." "If you should find you miss the sweet and tender love we used to share. Just go back to the places where we used to go, and I'll be there. Well, how can I forget you, girl?"

*falls over laughing* It is true that making the cover of Time indicates some sort of impact, at least at the moment the cover was chosen. What's funny is the idea vpw made the cover. He once was mentioned in part of an article about cults. They made him sound like a crackpot, and included a photo in the story of him riding around on a motorcycle. I read the article when I was in college, and even printed it out at the time. He wasn't made to sound significant at all. Although, he could have been said to have influenced the people in his group. (IIRC, it was 1971, not 1970.) We disagree there. We were TOLD that was true. I believe we were lied to OFTEN in twi. Well, a lot of the best people were not allowed to do what they did best, which was a shame. I think twi was organized to prevent that since it would make those people actual people and not ciphers, which would have diminished the image of vpw as the sole mover.

The thing is, John, your "explanation" of twi failed to distinguish between it, Jonestown, bowling teams, fraternities, militants, Sherlock Holmes fanclubs, or anything else. Whether you meant to or not, it only served to dodge the question so you could change the subject. At least it's not LITERALLY true that you "HAD TO CONSTANTLY REMIND PEOPLE OF THAT"? If that were true, someone would be, say, holding members of your family at gunpoint and requiring your posts keep to one unvarying topic and one unvarying position no matter how boring and uninformative you get at it. Instead, the "feel like" means that this is just something that you feel on a personal level that affects nobody but you and you feel the need to inflict it on everyone else here and are unable or unwilling to stop yourself before hitting the "reply" button. It certainly would partially explain why you tend to interrupt threads on ONE subject to change the subject rather than just make up a new thread on the subject you actually want to talk about. The rest of us do that whenever we want. Which, invariably, many of us would agree to. We felt pride in our positions. Then again, that's no guarantee of truth- political radicals of every stripe and terrorists are committed to their causes and proud of them right this minute. You're missing the point. Then again, you've admitted you don't read some posters' posts, so there's no surprise you'd miss any points they made while you were scrolling past and insisting on being unchanging. On a national scale, let alone international scale, twi IS "insignificant" and is barely a footnote, if that. It was big-but not enormous- for a handful of years. It was almost nonexistent until about 1970, when the House of Acts Christians and other legitimate Christians were diverted into it from doing "their own thing". By 1985, at its height, it was still not as big as most national churches. By 1990, 80% of THOSE people had all left or been kicked out. Over the next decade, both twi and the splinters lost people steadily, so both twi and its legacy groups, statistically speaking, are "insignificant and "irrelevant." A lot of failed religious groups existed in the 20th century in the US, and twi fits among them. Go ahead, try and find a history of the 20th century where it sounds like twi made a significant "impact" that wasn't written by twi or ex-twi people. Historians that don't specialize in cults have never heard of it, and many now may not have, either. Worldwide, I suspect more people discuss the "carbonari" than twi, including discussion right here. That having been said, was twi "evil and dangerous"? Yes, and it still is. For example, in 2010 in the UK (to pull some statistics), 5 people were killed by stinging insects. Statistically, that's an insignificant number. However, that's poor comfort if your loved one was one of the 5 people. So, people like us would continue to warn people about being careful around stinging insects no matter how statistically insignificant they are. Stinging instects are "dangerous". They aren't "evil" because they're not INTENTIONALLY trying to benefit from people at expense of the people. Twi, however, does- or, as you say, the people making the decisions of twi do. If all of Christianity was represented by twi or ex-twi, I'd have fled it just as many ex-twi'ers did. They had good reasons, as they see it, to consider Christianity as a whole to be harmful and not provide a benefit. And you're grossly inflating how much of a positive contribution twi's had to the US, "spiritually and culturally." Getting our attention is no guarantee of truth. Jim Jones drew the attention of a lot of people, and is better known than vpw despite having had a much shorter career. That's more than a little ironic coming from a guy who scrolls past posts, pauses to cherry-pick a few items to complain about, then claims there's only negatives at the GSC. John, if all you come to do here is complain, all you'll find in the threads ARE negatives. So, John, the question on the table, is how you define what twi is. How do you define it so you're not describing every organization in existence, preferably accurately?

In theory, I could have watched most of them. They were usually not on at convenient times for me. (I avoided "TekWar" on purpose.) I've no memory of hearing of "Odyssey 5", and Mrs Wolf's got no memory of hearing of "Jake 2.0". So you might have never heard of some of these.

"If you should find you miss the sweet and tender love we used to share. Just go back to the places where we used to go, and I'll be there."

I called in Mrs Wolf for the Charlotte Bronte thing. By the time we were done, we came up with "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane Eyre?" So, was it right?

To complain about people who complain about everything, thus becoming part of what he complains about. Which gives him something else to complain about. Naturally, once that's been pointed out, he'll complain about that, too. There's even a diminishing return of chasing people off. The biggest groups to chase off were in the beginning. Each group gets progressively harder to scare away. The last handful will either die in twi or have to be scraped off like barnacles. But I really think the lawyers insisted they change tactics.

Mrs Wolf said that #3 was "the Sentinel." (Please name or letter them for easy reference, I will request.) They all sound very interesting, though.

Never gonna fall for MODERN LOVE. Walks besides me MODERN LOVE. Walks on by, MODERN LOVE Gets me to the church on time....

Is the VR realm one something called "HARSH REALM"? How about "FIRST WAVE" for the first one you posted?

" Out of order — I'll show you out of order! You don't know what out of order is, Mr. Trask! I'd show you, but I'm too old, I'm too tired and I'm too f#in' blind. If I were the man I was five years ago, I'd take a FLAMETHROWER to this place! Out of order? Who the hell you think you're talking to?! I've been around, you know? There was a time I could see! And I have seen- boys like these, younger than these, their arms torn out, their legs ripped off! But there is nothin like the sight of an amputated spirit. There is... no prosthetic for that. You think you're merely sending this splendid foot-soldier back home to Oregon with his tail between his legs, but I say you are executing his soul! And why? Because he's not a "Baird man." Baird men. You hurt this boy, you're going to be Baird bums, the lot of ya."

Demagoguery and fanaticism are not exclusive to religion. People should think for themselves when approaching LIFE, not just religion. That means they should be careful about POLITICS as well as any other interactions.

Star Trek- First Contact

I think he DISCOVERED it by accident- then set out to do it on purpose after that. Broken Arrow's shown it's possible it was by design the first time. The evidence can support either possibility. That's up there with the times they chewed people out, kicked them out, then immediately gave them orders and had the nerve to be surprised when they were told to go f themselves since the person was now out and not subject to twi's ordinances.

Sometime in the 90s, lcm went off on one or more rants about how "the abundant life" was spiritual and was never supposed to be physical. That was after saying the opposite all across the 80s, of course. The man just got crazier as the 90s progressed until even twi had to put a stop to it-or, more to the point, twi's lawyers put a stop to it.

"Friends, we've got trouble! Right here in River City! With a capital 'T' and that rhymes with 'P' and that stands for Pool!"

My SUSPICION is that it was discovered BY ACCIDENT. vpw was a LAZY student who cut corners and BS'ed his way through things, and had an inflated sense of self. (He shows signs of Sociopathy as well.) We know he did this to the "Zero Corps." He got mad at them and kicked the whole group out. Then he turned around, and offered to let them return, provided they rededicate themselves to him. Many of them accepted this "offer." So, I think vpw did that one out of pique, as an impulse, then as covering his @$$ and getting them to pay tuition again. Then he realized he could make this a financially successful maneuver and worked out variations of it. This would then lead to the versions we were talking about.

Mel Brooks' "History of the World, Part I."

"But I'm funny how? I mean, funny like I'm a clown? I amuse you?"